AI and Automation
The best way to predict the future is to design it.
—Buckminster Fuller
Watch out. The walls have ears, the house has eyes, and artificial intelligence (AI) can bust you. “Smart house” is the term used to define a home whose appliances, from lighting to security systems, are capable of communicating with one another and to you and can be controlled remotely by a programmed schedule from an electronic device like a computer, tablet, smartphone, or even a watch. All devices are controlled by a master home automation controller, often called a smart-home hub.[1]
For example, the fridge will tell when you’re out of orange juice or eggs, put the item on a list, or go ahead and order groceries that, once a market delivers them to your home, perhaps will be put away by a house-bot.[2] Walls will do far more than hold up the roof and provide a border with the outside. Doors and floors will be “track padded” with sensors that will recognize footsteps and track where you are going and open doors. Through “airborne electromagnetic noise,” walls can track a user’s gestures and touch, and record conversations.[3] And if you choose, the house will be surveilled with strategic minicameras.[4]
The first smart device debuted in 1975 and was called X10; and worked with programmable outlets and switches and controlled some appliances, lights, and temperature.[5] A 1999 Disney film, Smart House, provided mainstream audiences with a sense of the possibilities on the horizon,[6] but the first smart-home models began to hit the consumer market in the early 2000s and have proliferated via the internet and related technologies today.[7]
As people travel for business or pleasure, chauffeur children to their school and activities, and pursue their own social pastimes, new smart systems will provide connectivity to everything in the household and will take care of household tasks. By glancing at their phones or other electronic devices, homeowners will obtain a quick check of the premises.
Any device in the house that uses electricity can be connected to a smart-home network. Whether you give a command by voice, remote control, tablet, or smartphone text, the smart system reacts. Most applications relate to lighting, home security, home theater and entertainment, and thermostat regulation. Add cameras and acoustic, aural, or olfactory sensors attached to AI programming, and you have a house with which you can buddy up and schedule when dinner or drinks will be ready, make and confirm appointments and other future plans, handle kids and their needs, ask advice, and even get a heads-up on your health.[8]
The idea of a smart home might make you think of George Jetson or maybe Bill Gates, who spent more than $100 million building his smart home.[9] But the days when smart-home systems were only for the well-to-do, tech-savvy, or the wealthy are past. Smart homes and home automation are becoming more common and will be more so in the future.
Much of this is due to the smashing success of smartphones and tablet computers connected to the internet of things (IoT)—the network of devices, vehicles, and home appliances that contain software, actuators, and connectivity that allow these things to link up, interact, and exchange data through digital networks.[10]
Approaching your driveway, a signal from your phone or tablet causes the garage doors to open. Another touch and a door unlocks; and with your voice command, “Hey, I’m home,” the wallpaper glows, the home is heated or cooled to your wishes, and a cool or warm breeze follows you around. The television is set to your favorite channel, your beverage of choice is on the coffee table and, as you move around, lights come on ahead of you and fade behind you. Motion and sound sensors will open doors and tell you if anyone else is in the house.
Favorite songs can be programmed to follow you throughout the house; the walls can change colors and photos or play video at will. The system keeps track of all that you do, and everyone can be “pinned” via an electronic tracking chip that makes adjustments as it learns everyone’s preferences. When two different “chips” enter the same room, the system tries to compromise, as with music or TV, on something that both people will enjoy.
Acting as an extra energy storage unit, vehicles can be used as buffers to deliver electricity to compensate for energy output or input of a home’s energy system. This technology can also be utilized for electronic appliances, to ease electrical flow at peak times and to allow the grid to “borrow” electricity from appliances during times of need.[11]
There are many “peak demand” power plants in the United States that only produce electricity for a minimal amount of time in order to prevent grid overloads during peak load times. These plants are expensive to operate, so there’s a great demand for cheaper solutions.[12] Smart homes and other buildings will be equipped with a “smart energy box” that can lower energy demand in a targeted manner during peak load phases, easing the strain on the grid, conserving energy, and saving money by as much as 30 percent, while maintaining the proper level of comfort for building occupants. The future supercity will make energy miners and energy traders of us all. Sensors throughout the city will provide essential information to keep energy use running efficiently.[13]
The IoT is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, and animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers (UIDs) and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.[14] Devices now can collect and transfer data about routine behaviors to control centers in the cloud for analysis and then program and/or alter the information for preferred settings and courses of actions. Some of the most common centrally controlled technologies in today’s smart home include:
Smart locks that provide a new home security experience with the ability to customize who can access your home and when, lock or unlock your door from anywhere with a smartphone, and even unlock the door by voice.[15]
A smart hub to ensure that smart devices can communicate properly with each other by linking several different products, including speakers, cameras, computers, smartphones, televisions, security systems, appliances, and more.
Automated heating and air conditioning systems offering the potential to save energy and money with smart thermostats that quickly and precisely automate the heating and cooling of a home, potentially reducing your electric bill. Other products such as connected lights and appliances can use less energy by powering down when not in use.
Connected lights, cameras, and even doorbells that can help make a home that much safer. If you’re home alone and burglars, for example, are checking out your house to see if they can break in, having these kinds of devices can alert authorities or simply scare intruders off.
Automation of some of the tedious tasks of home care, such as automatic vacuuming, a machine that automatically starts a wash or dry cycle, or a fridge that orders groceries online when it senses that you’re low.
Entertainment and information utilities, which consist of connected speakers with AI-based digital assistants can play music, offer news and sports scores, and recommend a good film to watch either at home or at a movie theater.
Water sensors to immediately alert you whenever excess water is detected where it doesn’t belong. (By the way, according to HomeAdvisor.com, the average cost to repair home water damage throughout the country is $2,476.[16])
Kid monitoring by smartphone, to easily and effortlessly check in on family members and pets. Know when kids come home from school, when cars arrive in the driveway, or when pets unexpectedly leave the house. For young children, parents, or pets that don’t carry a smartphone, simply place a SmartSense Presence sensor in their backpack, purse or pocket, or around their collar, respectively, to know when they come and go.
SmartThings, which allow you to protect your family by monitoring and securing dangerous and off-limit areas. Get immediate alerts if children open things like cleaning supply cabinets, medicine drawers, or gun cases.
Med-monitoring bottles that sense or count the number of pills taken and advise on when to order more.
Ovens that set an optimal time and cooking temperature so that you can check on Thanksgiving dinner while watching the football game.
Path lighting, for nighttime bathroom trips by voice or by touching a wall, or for instantly creating mood lighting for any occasion.
Bedroom warming for when you get out of bed, so that it’s nice and toasty when you get up.
Light regulation smart bulbs, based on the availability of daylight.
TV monitoring, so that your children can watch only approved programs and at certain times.
Smart security cameras to monitor the home when residents are doing errands, at work, or on vacation. Smart motion sensors are also able to identify the difference between residents, visitors, pets, and unauthorized persons and can notify residents and authorities when suspicious behavior is detected.
Monitors for how much you throw away and what you throw away.
Pet care utilities for feeding your pets on a schedule with a preset amount of food, cleaning litter boxes and dumping the contents on schedule.
Plant and lawn watering only when needed and with the exact amount of water necessary.
Management of battery storage of solar energy and a charge for an electric vehicle.
Connection to an electrical grid for information about available power and where energy is needed.[17]
The future smart city will employ a number of powerful automation and AI programs to process vast amounts of incoming data. These programs will track and upgrade improvements in automation and AI networks immediately. In fact, smart cities may witness the birth of the first truly large-scale AI, capable of interactive, reactive, and independent thinking to monitor and safeguard a city.
Geostationary and other satellites and orbital platforms will monitor the city’s atmosphere, pollution levels, weather systems, and local environment across the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, with particular attention paid to potential threats from earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters.
Urban “stack farms” will put vertical building space to efficient use in producing food for the city’s population, conferring on the smart city an unheard-of degree of agricultural autonomy. Integrated transportation systems, meanwhile, will reduce traffic congestion and strongly limit pollution.[18]
Sensors, networks, and wireless systems will communicate information about the health and status of the city and its infrastructure. Satellites will monitor the city’s atmosphere, pollution levels, weather systems, resource availability, and energy use.[19]
Sufficient energy to power smart cities will be generated from clean, renewable sources, with each power system compartmentalized for quick isolation with robust backup systems in case of failure—all watched over by a smart system.[20]
These are just a few of the more notable features of the future smart house and city. With more than half of the human species huddling together in dense urban areas, it’s inevitable that our cities will need to be monitored and upgraded constantly. Cities of the future will be less defined by their skylines and more by the sophistication and upkeep of their “smarts.”[21]
In various surveys across the country, health care is one of the most important issues. In the future we’ll be able to conduct a pre–doctor visit by employing home health-care equipment, such as monitoring and diagnostic tools. Digital developments in health care will also mean fewer visits to the doctor. The process of taking care of millions of adults worldwide will be simplified and will include monitoring, through radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, the movements of someone suffering from dementia, and making sure people get and take their medicine.[22]
Homes will be equipped with body monitors, which will scan and provide basic digital diagnosis of residents. Watches will be equipped with electrocardiograms to detect possible irregular heart rhythms, with which six million people are diagnosed every year. Close to seven hundred thousand are affected by heart problems and don’t even know it, the occurrences of which are expected to double by 2030. A smart health system app can detect an A-fib immediately and notify the endangered and the closest health-care outlet.[23]
Smart health systems/software will also recommend various basic treatments and even order medication (with consultation from a doctor or a doctor’s personal digital assistant) that can be delivered by an air drone or a building robot. The inclusion of health-monitoring equipment in the home could have a tremendous beneficial impact on average families, especially those in rural areas. For example, a home monitor could check the heart rates of its occupants, track any illnesses or preexisting conditions, check meds, automatically alert doctors or first responders about any abnormalities or problems, and also advise a family member or significant other when a loved one is suffering a health emergency.[24]
Another innovation is a smartphone application called Mind Monitoring Systems. The app is designed to track a user’s emotions and state of mind throughout the day using voice measurements.
Google’s latest patent describes using ultrasonic bathtubs, pressure sensing toilet seats, and other devices to monitor people’s cardiovascular health. The pressure-sensing toilet seat would also be used to measure the patient’s blood pressure, as well as monitor the individual’s health through their bowel movements.
An ultrasonic bathtub can generate high-frequency sound waves and gather an echo from these waves in order to investigate the user’s internal body structure—blood flow and tissue movement—and create 3D measurements of that structure.
Another device is a color-sensing mirror that records a person’s skin tone to determine irregularities; it also measures variations in a size or color of an organ or limb—or growth. A radar field device would reflect radiation from human tissue to measure skin temperature, heart rate, and skeletal movement.[25]
Technology will be available that determines trends for human physiological systems in order to catch life-threatening states before it is too late. That includes any abnormalities in your pee and poop that could be signs of cancer and incipient diabetes, among a host of other diseases. The technology will also deliver this information to your personal physician.[26]
A present problem is that very few companies produce all the devices that may be found in a household or know how to connect them all to a smart hub to ensure that the devices will work together efficiently. It’s also unlikely that consumers would be loyal enough to buy every household device or even a majority from a single manufacturer. So if companies want to ensure that their devices talk to others, they will have to develop all devices with common standards and shared software. This level of collaboration may take some time, as many of these firms are direct competitors.[27]
Perhaps the next question is, is all this really necessary? Was the auto a necessity at the turn of the twentieth century, or the radio or phone around the same time, the airplane, refrigerators, the national electric grid, television, rocketry and satellites, the personal computer, and the internet? These are a few of the things that people lived without until they were invented and then became things we couldn’t live without.
At present, fully integrated custom systems are expensive and often require a consultant to install them and possible structural changes to the home—all involving costs tacked onto the price of the system itself. Systems and their abilities range from moderately expensive to well outside the range of the average consumer. However, costs will lower with increased demand.[28]
A big concern is the potential for criminals to hack into a smart-home system, as home security is high on the consumer want list.[29] This has serious implications, as smart-home systems generally integrate with home security systems, leaving not only your home but confidential secrets about you, your family, finances, and other secure information vulnerable. A study by Hewlett-Packard exposed some problems:
100 percent of the studied devices used in home security contain significant vulnerabilities, including password security, encryption, and authentication issues.
80 percent of devices tested failed password security, with most devices allowing such mundane passwords as 1234.
70 percent of IoT devices examined failed to encrypt communications to the internet and local networks, and half allowed unencrypted communications.
The user interfaces of six out of ten devices tested had issues such as XSS inserts (a flawed code that allows hackers entry), poor session management, weak default credentials, and credentials transmitted in clear text.
60 percent of devices didn’t deploy encryption with software downloads.[30]
A systems integration report found that 92 percent of consumers were concerned about the security of their homes and smart-home data. If hackers were able to infiltrate a smart device, they could potentially turn off the lights and alarms and unlock doors, leaving a home defenseless to a break-in. Furthermore, hackers could potentially access the homeowner’s network, leading to the discovery of all kinds of sensitive material and making one vulnerable to crimes such as blackmail, extortion, or identity theft.[31]
Advanced smart security systems can make a record of and notify you if there has been an intrusion, detect unfamiliar vehicles approaching your home, sense unfamiliar smells and step patterns, notify the authorities, automatically lock doors, provide room-by-room surveillance, and track unfamiliar footsteps, voices, and strangers at the door.[32] Security is an important aspect to most people, and many will take comfort in the idea that someone or something is watching out for the safety of their goods and people. After all, it took the FBI only three days to run down the two Boston bombing suspects, aided by a department store’s cameras,[33] and inside of a week for London investigators to identify terrorist’s attackers with the aid of street cameras.[34]
But it’s a touchy subject to others who will irately scream about governmental abuse and override. The idea of constant monitoring feels un-American to many of us, especially those who laughed when comic Yakov Smirnoff said , “In America you watch television; in Soviet Union television watches you.”[35]
While less than 1 percent of homes currently employ full smart-home technology, Allied Market Research believes that the market will grow at an annual rate of 30 percent through 2020, at which point the market will be worth $35.3 billion.[36] “The global smart home market is forecast to reach a value of more than $53 billion by 2022,” reports Zion Market Research.[37] The number of devices connected to the internet is estimated to grow by 140 percent, reaching fifty billion worldwide by 2030, according to the latest study by Strategy Analytics.[38]
IoT devices have already outnumbered the human population. With constantly dropping prices of sensors, connectivity, and so forth, the era of smart homes is not very far off. But how useful or widely accepted that era will be is still a topic of skepticism. Whether we all want it or not; we definitely can’t escape it.[39]
Driving the market will be the decreasing costs of smart technologies, increased government regulation regarding energy consumption, increased energy costs, improved consumer awareness issues about the environment, and increasing consumer security concerns.[40]
The average cost of a smart home is around $1,000 per room, with most homes having an average of five smart rooms. A system bus or hub is a single computer that links all of the devices within a home or network. The basic costs of installing a starter home system range from $40 to $500. Wireless systems run from $300 to $600. And monthly service is $35 to $70 per month, plus activation fees, which normally cost around $200 to $500.[41]
But like anything else, you can spend as much as you are able. So be careful to check out the options for connecting appliances that you already own against brand new stuff off the shelf.
Several companies are or will be debuting robot makes and models that will be far more functional than a Roomba but not quite as formidable as Star Wars’ C-3PO. Many experts and futurists predict that in the next several decades, robots will be in every household. They will likely be fully integrated with the smart-home operating system and will help manage it. They will not only assist with manual tasks but will also learn a family’s moods, patterns, preferences, and behavior and become a teacher, helping with homework or other problems.[42]
Robots will be programmed to recognize faces and respond appropriately to the emotions of people. Educational robots may also target more advanced learners and will soon be online teaching. Their facial recognition capabilities would be used to shake things up when students look bored or are unmotivated, and they may even take a role in parenting by reading bedtime stories and helping with social problems. They will soothe crying kids, play or sing to them, be equipped with baby monitors and built-in cameras, and even act as nightlights. Bigger, beefier bots will be designed to handle heavyweight duties and carry out tasks like lifting and carrying.[43]
Diving into the sub-rosa world of sex, a number of companies are currently developing robots designed to combine utility and physical pleasure–sexbots with a few already on the market. Unlike sex toys and dolls, which are typically sold in off-the-radar shops and hidden in closets, sexbots may become mainstream. A 2017 survey suggested almost half of Americans think that having sex with robots will become a common practice within fifty years.[44]
Like anything else, this synthetic coupling comes with a price tag that can range from thousands to a place in Dublin where for an hour you can indulge in silicon sex for about 88 pounds, or about $100.[45] And apparently, even though sexbots are for sale in the United States, it will take time for morality and the laws to catch up with human desire. But be nice, because when the machines rise, as they do in the science fiction films, you may not want to have anything out of the ordinary to answer for.
As a recap, consider the following smart-system balance sheet.
Peace of mind. Smart homes are well-known for their improved security. Many systems come with remote dashboard capabilities, so forgetting to turn off that coffee pot before you leave no longer requires a trip back to the house. Simply pull up the smart dashboard on a smart device or computer and turn the coffee pot off in a matter of seconds.
Efficiency. When a system obtains information from cars, appliances, or energy grids regarding their requirements, it creates an energy demand forecast for the next day.
Accountability of designers and builders. They will become more accountable for increasing the efficiency of energy use and for managing the resource demands of buildings during construction and remodeling, along with providing consumption forecasts for the life of the buildings and reducing negative impacts on human health and the environment.
Savings. A study by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy found commercial buildings could collectively save up to $60 billion by increasing energy efficiency investments by just 1 to 4 percent. Medium-sized buildings can expect to save up to 25 percent on energy costs with smart energy management, and returns can happen quickly with very little oversight and maintenance from staff.[46]
Ability to customize as many or as few electronic devices as you choose. They learn and adapt to your preferences without your having to ever input a preselected schedule. Either traditional or behavior-based automation can be applied to virtually every gadget that can be remotely controlled, from sprinkler systems to coffeemakers.
Wirelessness. Smart-home technology and compatible devices are becoming more friendly, and many can be installed with a minimum of tools and expertise, using only the information provided in the owner’s manual.
Home smart systems have struggled to become mainstream and have suffered in part due to their technical nature. There may be a learning curve for non-tech-savvy people.
Depending on the complexity of the system, installing a home automation device can be a significant burden on the homeowner. It can either cost you money if you hire an outside contractor or cost you time if you venture to do it yourself.
Not all systems are compatible with one another. Your security system, for example, may require you to log into one location to manage settings, while your smart thermostat may require you to log into another platform to turn the air conditioner on and off. To truly leverage the convenience of home automation, you may need to invest in a centralized platform to control all systems and devices from one location.
Smart-home technology can require not only an investment in a centralized platform but also expensive add-ons that will replace existing fixtures that expire or may become obsolete. For example, light switches and controls may need to be changed out from basic light switches to “smart” controls that are able to accept input from smart programs. A standard light switch may cost a buck or two while a “smart” light switch might cost up to $40.[47]
Efficient, flexible, and interactive electrical smart grid technologies will shift energy management away from a centralized producer-controlled utility network to a smaller decentralized, proactive, and self-controlled grid from city to city or building to building. This will turn your power grid into a demand-controlled tool, enabling you to generate, deliver, save, and store power more efficiently.[48]
Automating everything in life may sound extremely appealing, but sometimes a good old-fashioned flip of the switch is a lot easier than reaching for your smartphone to turn lights on and off. Before you decide which system is right for you, think about how far you want to take home automation in your home and how you will communicate with it.
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